The online home of the self-published comics & prose anthology, Warrior27, an homage to Britain's early-80s comic magazine, Warrior - along with the various writings, musings, and miscellany of Dan Fleming and Chris Beckett.

Monday, February 13, 2017

A Fistful of Toys

Everyone has a “Top
5.”But Brad and Matt, along with fellow
dorks, Darren, Lisa, and Bryan, choose to walk a different path, and amended
that to “A Fistful…” with their blog and podcast, In the Mouth of
Dorkness.Topics range from “Heroic
Kids” to “Spies” to “Summer Movies” to “Punches” to all things in between.Always fun, often insightful, and something I
have regularly pilfered for Warrior27.As they say:If you’re going to steal, steal from those you know relatively well,
who will not sue you.

In the Dorks’
latest fistful they offered up their top 5 toys.Being a film-centric podcast, the choices
leaned heavily toward toys utilized in movies, though there were also toys from
their childhoods interspersed among the various fistfuls.It was, no surprise, a great episode, with
all dorks on point—great choices, great one-liners, great off-color jokes that
kept a smile on my face throughout the whole thing.Check it out here:http://www.podbean.com/media/share/pb-4nggg-6791e4

For my own fistful
of toys, though, it’s all about the toys I had as a kid.This list could easily—like so many
reminiscences of my childhood—end up being filled with Star Wars toys, but that
wouldn’t be all that fun (maybe I’ll save that for a later Fistful).Variety is the spice of life (1 point for
hoary cliché), and I try, if nothing else, to make these lists
interesting.But, enough preamble, let’s
get to it.

5. Matchbox cars

Matchbox cars hold
a special place in my memories.My first
collection (followed by Star Wars, comic books, Tolkien books, Sandman by
Gaiman, etc. etc.), it all began when Granddad would take me downtown to
Newberry’s or across the river to Hyslop’s (in Canada) to buy me a Matchbox
car.The collection quickly grew, and
once he passed away, I didn’t stop, amassing dozens of these little metal cars
and trucks, most of which I still have today.

One of the favorite
things to do with my Matchboxes was to play smash-up derby.My friends would come over, and each of us
would choose 20 cars for our respective teams.The point was to take one car each and, from across the room, whip them
toward the center where they would hopefully smash into each other, toppling
one or both—the streamlined race cars with front ends low to the ground were
good for getting under the other vehicles, but some of the dump trucks were
more stable, making them difficult to topple; there was a lot of strategy
involved in the choosing of one’s cars.Whichever vehicle ended up on its side or top, as long as the other car
remained on its wheels, went to the other player.Working through our teams, a winner was
declared when the other person lost all their Matchbox cars.It was a blast!

4. Wild West Fort

This thing was
low-tech, and I loved it.You had to put
it all together, clipping the fence pieces in place without busting off the
points where they attached, then set out the soldiers and the American
Indians—some of which were bow-legged with little nubs on the insides of their
ankles so they could sit atop the horses that came with it—and then…
attack!Hours of fun ensued—months’
worth of hours, and it was always magical.Unless you had one of these (and are old enough not to have so many
electronics at your disposal), you are probably looking at this picture and
wondering what is wrong with me.Ah,
well, that’s your loss.Sorry.

3. Evel Knievel

I was born in
’72.Evel Knievel was huge in the 70s,
and early 80s, a real-life superhero who challenged death and lived to tell
about it—launching his rocket cycle across the Snake River Canyon, jumping 13
buses at Wembley Stadium, going fast enough to reach escape velocity of the
Earth (that last one…not real, but it was probably something that crossed
children’s minds).I expect I saw
Knievel on ABC’s Wide World of Sports (another nostalgic throwback to my youth,
which includes features on Muhammad Ali and the Harlem Globetrotters), and like
many children, I was enamored.So, with
the advent of the Evel Knievel Stunt Cycle, I had to have that.Spinning the big white wheel would rev up the
engine, then you’d hit the switch and release Knievel, to race across the
floor, or stumble through your backyard.I’m sure it did not live up to the commercials, but that didn’t
matter.It was still a blast.

2. Six Million
Dollar Man

The Six Million
Dollar Man was a favorite TV show, and the best Lee Majors television role,
period (and, yes, I’m including Fall Guy
and Big Valley in the discussion [insert smile emoji]).So, of course, I wanted to have the doll
(*ahem*, I mean action figure).With
bionic limbs and a bionic eye—which you could look through by putting your own eye
to the hole in the back of Steve Austin’s skull—this toy was…amazingly
simple.Like all the other toys on this
list, it was very low-tech, which meant your imagination had to do the heavy
lifting when you were playing.No
problem.“We have the technology” was
the prime directive when running around the back yard with the Six Million
Dollar Man.

1. Death Star

It all comes back
to Star Wars.And the Death Star playset
was the pinnacle of all Star Wars toys (one could argue that the U.S.S. Flagg
from G.I. Joe may be the mother of all playsets, but I was in that limbo
between being a kid buying toys and being an adult buying toys—the point, as a
teenager, where one is “too cool” for toys—during the Yo Joe craze and missed
out…though I did have a handful of the figures).With four levels, an elevator that could take
you to each floor, a trash compactor (accessed through a trap door in the
floor) with “trash” and a dianoga (now we knew what it sort of looked like),
the cannon at the top (which popped out of its housing when the rebels stuffed
a proton torpedo down the nearest exhaust port), a precipice where Obi-Wan
could deactivate the tractor beam, and a retractable bridge that revealed a
chasm over which Luke and Leia had to swing, this set had it all.Simply add action figures, preferably Star
Wars but any roughly 4-inch figures would suffice, and you had a wealth of fun
possibilities before you.The Death
Star—the best Star Wars toy they made.

And, for bonus
points, if you lived in Canada—or right on the border, as my best friend and I
did—you could get the Canadian version of the Death Star, a completely
different setup that offered just as much fun.Check it out below.

So, the top 5 toys
of my youth.There are plenty of others
deserving of honorable mentions.But I
think I’ll share that in a different post, soonish.Now, what are yours?Drop them into the comments and tell me why I
might be wrong, or maybe not as right as I believed.And thanks for reading.